Empathy with my enemies

It's Rainforest Mind with me, Casper Thomson, and I've put off recording this podcast for a while, and I've put off, uh, and I've tried to record it a few times and ended up pressing stop and starting again because in my mind I've been thinking, and where else would I be thinking, I've been thinking about dialogue across difference, but particularly across difference where there are not just strong feelings, but actually real harm has been caused by one side to the other side, emotionally, sometimes physically. And I've been thinking about this in the context of my vow as a Buddhist to save all sentient beings, to facilitate this, the awakening of all sentient beings. And all beings includes people on both sides of conflicts, and it includes people I don't like and people that hurt me and people that hurt other people. How do you save those beings? How do you offer them the same opportunity? How do I offer them the same opportunity that I offer to people that I like, that are easy to get along with? There's a challenge for me there. And if I believe I'm not meeting that challenge, then I'm not fulfilling my own potential. And I'm not saying I have to do that right now, and maybe I won't even do it in this lifetime. The Bodhisattva vow isn't necessarily something one accomplishes, but it suggests a direction of personal growth for me. How do I include more and more types of people, more and more sentient beings in the field of my own compassion. So maybe I'll start with a story that suggests hope. This is from the September edition of Therapy Today, which is the magazine of BACP, a professional body for counselors and psychotherapists. And it just arrived today. And on page 8, there's an article about radicalization. And I just want to read the beginning of the article, the first paragraph, to you. The headline is "Fighting Terror with Friendship." The subheading is "Sally Brown talks to two counselors who have crossed a divide to fight radicalization together." Fíogán Murray and Nicola Benaiah, have much in common. Both councillors, they are also each grieving over the death of a son. But there is also much that could divide them. Fegan's 29-year-old son Martin Hett was one of 22 young people killed by an Islamic suicide bomber at the Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena on the 22nd of May 2017. Nicholas' 19-year-old son Rashid left his Birmingham home in May 2015 to fight with Islamic State in Syria. He was killed by a drone strike 6 months later. Since meeting last year, they've joined forces to challenge extremism and raise awareness of the signs of radicalization. Wow. Two people who you might think had a natural dislike, not, maybe not a natural dislike, but have all the reason in the world who dislike each other and have strong feelings of anger or hate to each other end up working together. That's the story that I like to read on a Thursday afternoon. I also want to read a couple of paragraphs just from the first page. This is Fígan's story, is the first section. And she describes a counter-terrorist officer coming into their conservatory and speaking to them, and it says, he talked about the 22 dead, and I said, well, actually there are 23 dead, aren't there? He looked at me and I said, the bomber died as well, and he was a human being. He said they didn't count the perpetrators among the dead, and I said it didn't alter the fact he was a human being, a misguided one, but also a victim. So she's able to include the suicide bomber who killed her son in her field of compassion. She says, 'You've taken our sons, but you've not taken our spirit.' We have choices in how we respond to situations, and there are more powerful ways to respond than with anger, resentment, and hate. On that note, I will say something like, uh, actually, anger, resentment, and hate are feelings, and we don't get to control how we feel. They just come up. But we do have some decisions about what to do with ourselves when we feel those feelings. As Dharma Vidya, David Brazier, my Buddhist teacher, says in his book The Feeling Buddha, I think it is very important to clarify the meaning here, since there is a common idea that Buddhism implies elimination of feelings. Not at all. The Second Noble Truth tells us feelings are facts, and as such, they are completely natural and acceptable. Problems do not arise from the fact of having feelings. Problems arise from what we do with them or from our attempts to avoid having them. And I'm also reminded of Carl Rogers, the founder of person-centered therapy, saying the facts are always friendly. Of course, sometimes the facts can be a bit scary as well as being friendly, but— and feelings can be a bit scary as as well. Anger particularly can take us by surprise, and, and we don't want to know that we're angry people. But ultimately, if we want long-term, uh, ease and equanimity, the facts are always friendly. So I started thinking about this issue because at the weekend I was in Worcester walking with the March for Unity, who were walking in support of community cohesion. On the same day, the English Defence League were marching in a different part of Worcester protesting the building of a mosque. Is it possible to have healing across the whole community, I wondered, or do we just need to throw out the hateful people. I remember on my group therapy training module, Tomović is saying, "A group has many different ways of solving a conflict or a problem. One of those ways is getting rid of somebody or getting rid of part of the group, but it's not necessarily the best way. It depends on the group." And this is where I was worried about speaking, because I'm not talking about compromising anybody's safety. Here at the temple, for example, we've got a very clear safeguarding policy, and I've been part of, uh, safeguarding committees and discussions. Alongside some of the trustees here. And the primary purpose of safeguarding is to keep people safe. And we think, you know, and important, we keep the victims safe, we keep those who are vulnerable safe. But my vow is to save all sentient beings, which must include perpetrators and aggressors as well. So is it possible to make a space for those to have spiritual practice, for example? As well as keeping vulnerable people safe, well, maybe it means that we provide different spaces. A friend of mine does chaplaincy in a prison, for example, and provides space for spiritual practice there. So there are people that are separated from the community because they're in prison, and yet they've got an opportunity to practice. Here in the temple. It might be so that I go and meet somebody away from the community and offer them spiritual practice, dialogue, community. So this is— these are the questions that have been with me, particularly in relationship to this march, and particularly in relationship to my own feelings about what was going on, that I wasn't entirely clear about at the time, partly I think because I went with such a clear intention to carry a peaceful energy on this march, knowing the potential, uh, for my own strong feelings. But I was really thinking about other people's strong feelings and those angry faces that I'd seen in photographs of previous marches, uh, not just from the right wing but from the from the left wing, from people supporting community cohesion as well. And our march for community cohesion was very peaceful. There was a young girl giving out flowers, which I carried a rose and a carnation, which I really enjoyed, rather than a placard. There was a dhol drum, Indian dhol drum band that was very lively and upbeat, and that felt like a really nice energy to carry through the city centre with us. And yet part of me was angry because when somebody used— when I heard somebody using what I thought was misogynistic language around me, I just felt this wave of anger come up towards them. And actually I did tell them off. I don't know how skillful that was, but That's what happened. I got upset with them. And it's interesting, isn't it? Because my question is something like, how do you— how do I take a very clear ethical stand and also provide the opportunity for spiritual healing to everybody? I've also been thinking a bit about this in terms of shadow work. One of the things that can happen when you exclude somebody from a group is that you also exclude part of yourself. And this isn't an A always leads to B situation, it's just something that can happen. And it's not a reason for not excluding people if the group safety is at stake, but it is something to be curious about, particularly if there's strong feelings involved. When you want— when you desperately want to scapegoat somebody, when I desperately want to scapegoat somebody, it's usually a sign that I'm also trying to repress something in myself or not look at some hidden belief. In my own shadow. So in being angry with somebody using misogynistic language, for example, it might be that I don't want to admit to my own, uh, sexist impulses. Inevitably, being in this culture, in this time, uh No matter how firmly I aim towards feminism and equality and keeping and treating people well, I'm still going to be conditioned by all those messages around me and my personal history and the history of my society and have those patriarchal, sexist, misogynistic impulses in me. And I'd much rather not see them and think of myself as somebody who's completely woke, completely liberated, completely treats everybody fairly, recognizes all sorts of oppression. And, and you know, sometimes that's true and sometimes the opposite's true. And when I looked at the faces of the EDL as we marched past them I wondered what I might be throwing out if I wanted to throw them out of my community, psychologically speaking. Maybe some inter— maybe some internal fear of otherness. If I don't have to look at them, what don't I have to look at in myself? Maybe my own anger. Maybe I could just pretend to get on with everybody and to feel equally good about everybody. But again, sometimes that's true and sometimes it isn't true. So there's some kind of parallel here between the importance of dialoguing and understanding others for the sake of getting on well with others, and the importance of understanding others for the sake of personal liberation and letting go of conceit, of arrogance. You know, the endpoint of Buddhism, if there can be said to be an endpoint, is letting go of conceit, not pretending to be something other than we are, and letting go of the ego. Dialoguing with the other across difference ultimately enables that process because it invites a deep honesty with ourselves as we begin to make a space to include strange and unusual voices, not necessarily to agree with those voices that we find strange and unusual. And this is one of the tricky areas, of course, because, you know, the reason I don't like being angry is because I don't want to think of myself as an angry person. Now ultimately, we know anger is not helpful. Generally makes things worse. So it's good not to be an angry person. But to the extent that I ignore my own anger to prop up that identity, I'm becoming part of the problem. Whereas admitting that, oh, in these moments I can be angry, ironically will probably mean I'm more likely to be able to let go of that and process it and move into other emotional states and spaces. So I don't know that I've got any conclusions here. Just a series of thoughts and reflections, I suppose. Perhaps the final thoughts are the importance of dialogue for the sake of our communities and for our own sake, with an understanding that that goes— necessarily goes alongside keeping vulnerable people safe, and that actually when we keep vulnerable people safe properly, there is an opportunity not only for those vulnerable people to flourish because they're now in good conditions. When we keep all people— you know, I'm talking about safeguarding— but when we keep our communities safe, there's an opportunity for our communities to flourish. But when we do it properly, which means including the perpetrators or the potential aggressors inner field of compassion, there's also an opportunity for them to flourish too. And the best flourishing happens when those divides are healed. And the most, I suspect, moves away from extremism tend to happen when those divides are healed. More and more, as a therapist, what I keep coming back to is the power of empathy. Empathizing not just with what my client is telling me, but what they aren't telling me, empathizing with the whole person. With the spiritual practice, I come back to empathy for myself, for the parts of myself that I don't like. In my relationships, empathy for the whole person, for the parts of the person I like, for the parts of the person I don't like. And I think this is true in community relationships as well. Empathy for the people that I like, empathy for the people I don't like, whilst being very clear empathy does not mean colluding or agreeing with. It means an attempt to understand and to deeply hear, uh, the wound wherever it manifests, to deeply hear whatever is manifesting wherever it manifests. This isn't necessarily easy work. Sometimes it's very easy, sometimes love flows naturally, but it isn't always easy. It is important work. Maybe next time I'll look at some of the things that get in the way of empathy and some of the things that can support us and deepen us in our empathic, uh, practices. And responses. Thanks for listening. Satya Robyn.